


The Sadness Will Last Forever

by TweekTweak



Category: South Park
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Use, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TweekTweak/pseuds/TweekTweak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Craig rolls his eyes; that kid was fucking insane.<br/>Then again, wasn’t he also locked up in the loony bin, and didn’t that also make him fucking insane by default?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Craig starts his Tuesday morning by chain smoking two cigarettes, before ducking back underneath his duvet and praying that his bed sheets will swallow him up. Then, when they still haven’t ten minutes later, he sighs heavily, rubs his sleepy eyes, and stumbles out of bed. His dad’s already awake, he notes as he pulls a loose t-shirt over his head, and he’s hungover too if the slur in his voice is anything to go by. He’s in Ruby’s room just now, shouting about whatever it is that he’s annoyed about today, and Craig takes this as an opportunity to dart down the deserted hallway and into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

Opening the fridge, Craig scowls when he discovers that there’s no milk, but he isn’t surprised; his father’s always out drinking, and he can’t remember the last time his mother moved from the couch. Shrugging, he makes his coffee black and picks the mug up, wandering through to the living room where his mom is sitting on one of the threadbare sofas. Craig takes a seat, returning the weak smile his mother offers him as he turns up the volume on the TV. He stares blankly at it once he’s completely drowned out his father’s voice with some stupid American sitcom, finding even the annoying canned laughter to be less infuriating than listening to his dad ranting at eight thirty in the morning.

He swallows a mouthful of scalding coffee before setting the mug down on the coffee table where it sits forgotten. He sees his mom’s lips move but doesn’t catch what she says so he ignores her, picking up the packet of cigarettes someone (probably his dad) has left on the table, taking one out of the box and lighting it. His mom speaks again. Craig ignores her again.

“Craig!” his mom snaps once he’s smoked about half of his cigarette. She grabs the remote and turns the sound down on the TV, “For the hundredth time, are you going to go to school today?”

Craig pulls a face at the question, although he _is_ half considering attending today; he hasn’t gone to class for about a week and a half now, and the Pupil Support staff are beginning to ask questions. The last thing Craig needs right now is another referral to social work. “Yeah, maybe,” he eventually replies, exhaling a billow of cigarette smoke in his mother’s face, which she does her best to ignore, “But only because the teachers are sticking their noses in.”

It takes him a good ten minutes to find his school work, and by the time he’s discovered his books laying in a pile behind the sofa his father has finally stopped shouting. Stuffing his things into his backpack and rolling a joint to smoke while he walks to school, Craig ducks into his younger sister’s room.

“See you later, Ruby,” he wraps his arms round his sibling, “Don’t be late for school.”

Calling a ‘bye’ to his mom, Craig makes his way to the front door, and just as he’s unlocking it his father bursts out of his parent’s bedroom and waylays him, and Craig does his best not to make a face as the older man grabs him by the front of his jacket and pulls him in close.

“You’d better get your fuckin’ scrawny ass to school today, boy,” his father warns, stale beer lingering on his breath, “I’m sick of getting them on the phone ‘cause you can’t find it in yourself to show up.”

“Well if you’d let go of me, I was about to leave,” Craig replies coolly, and the man releases him. Craig leaves quickly, slamming the front door closed behind him.

xxxxx

Craig hasn’t even been at school for an hour before he remembers why he stopped attending.

“If it isn’t Mr Tucker!” his first period teacher, Mr Abbot, feigns shock when Craig walks into biology fifteen minutes late, “Am I seeing things?”

Craig manages to resist the temptation to march straight back out of the classroom, and takes his seat, ignoring the quiet snickering of his classmates.

“I expect Mr Mackey will want to have a chat with you at some point,” Abbot continues after Craig sits down, “Since this is the first time you’ve blessed us with your presence in over a week.”

“Whatever, dickhead,” Craig grumbles under his breath, not expecting said dickhead to actually hear him. When he’s promptly asked to leave, Craig stands and stalks out of the classroom, not forgetting to flip Mr Abbot off as he leaves.

Pupil Support staff are nosy bastards, Craig decides when Mr Mackey hunts him down not long after he’s kicked out of biology.

He finds Craig standing behind the cafeteria smoking a cigarette. Sighing, he greets him, “Good morning, Craig. It’s nice to see you at school, for once.”

Looking up at the teacher, Craig raises an eyebrow and takes a deep drag on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke into Mr Mackey’s face spitefully and waiting for him to start spouting his ‘smoking’s bad, m’kay?’ spiel.

“You really shouldn’t be smoking here, you know,” he frowns. Craig knows, but doesn’t stub his cigarette out. “… but I’ll let you off this once, m’kay? Anyway, I think we need to have a chat, don’t you?”

Craig expects to be frogmarched straight to Mr Mackey’s office, but to his surprise the man just leans against the cafeteria wall next to him (probably trying to relate to his angsty teenage self, or something stupid like that, Craig supposes).

“Would you like to tell me why you haven’t been at school these past few weeks?”

“I didn’t feel like coming in,” Craig answers truthfully, before taking a few more drags on his cigarette, stubbing it out against the wall, and flicking the butt away.

“M’kay…” Mr Mackey sighs, “Well, not many teenagers enjoy school, but that doesn’t mean you can just choose not to come.”

Craig shoves his hands into his pockets and says nothing.

“Craig,” the teacher’s tone is gentler now, “Is everything… okay at home? I know social services have been round before…”

“Good god,” Craig snorts, “My life outside of this shit hole is none of your goddamn business.”

“Craig, as your school councillor, I have a duty of care, m’kay? And since we have reason to believe you may not be safe at home, it is, as you so eloquently put it, my ‘goddamn business’, m’kay?”

“Whatever. I knew coming to school today was a bad idea,” Craig picks his bag up, slings it over one shoulder, and walks away from the teacher, flipping the man off when he hears him following him.

Knowing full well that his dad will probably still be drunkenly blundering around their flat until at least midday, Craig takes a longer route home than usual to pass the time. Smoking his last cigarette, he stops when he finds himself at Stark’s Pond, taking a seat on the cold bench. Unzipping his backpack, he digs around under his school books until he finds what he’s looking for. Hands closing around the neck of the glass bottle, he pulls it out of his bag and uncaps it, taking a drink of the harsh liquid - vodka; his drink of choice.

Wincing a little as it burns at his throat; he sets the bottle down beside him and stares out at the murky pond water, fiddling absentmindedly with a loose thread on the cuff of his jacket and thinking about his life and how much he hates it sometimes. He hates his dad; the way he doesn’t let his mom have any friends or a life; the way he’ll jump at any opportunity to beat Craig to a bloody pulp; the way he doesn’t care enough about his daughter to stop her from turning into a female version of Craig…

Sometimes he hates his mom too, for not leaving his dad after all the shit he puts them through. Hell, sometimes he gets annoyed at her for ever having him in the first place; it’s not like he serves any purpose on this earth other than a human punch bag for his father, after all.

He doesn’t hate Ruby though. He could never hate Ruby.

Trying not to think about his trainwreck of a family, he knocks back a couple of mouthfuls of vodka.

xxxxx

After a while Craig checks the time on his phone; quarter to twelve. Deciding that it’s probably safe to head home, he stands and throws his backpack over one shoulder. When he’s halfway back to his parent’s flat he picks up the pace a little, realizing how badly he’s itching for a smoke, and he silently curses himself for picking up the disgusting habit in the first place. He hopes his dad has left a spare pack lying around at least, or he’ll have to convince his mom to nip to the shop for some, and his mom can be a pretty stubborn bitch when she doesn’t want to leave the house. Desperate to ease the nagging crave, Craig manages to get home within twenty minutes, and has already loudly slammed the front door closed behind him before he realises.

_Dad’s still home._

“Who the fuck is that?” his father bellows from the living room, and, mumbling a string of profanities under his breath, Craig darts through to his bedroom, grateful that he lives in a flat so at least there are no stairs to serve as an obstacle. “Craig, is that you?”

Slamming his bedroom door closed, Craig collapses against it as his father throws his weight upon the other side, the wood splintering under the pressure.

“You’d better open this fuckin’ door right now, boy! I’ve had the school on the phone about you!”

His father slams against his bedroom door a second time, cracking it, and Craig yelps in fear. When the door finally gives, he scrambles across his bedroom into the far corner and hopes that maybe his dad will go easy on him for once.

Not bloody likely, he spites himself.

“I thought I told you to go to school?”

“I did,” Craig answers quietly, not daring to look up at his father’s angry red face.

“Well why the fuck didn’t you stay there, you stupid idiot of a boy? Why are you back here alrea- don’t fucking shrug at me, Craig!”

“I’m back because the place is a fucking shithole,” Craig announces, and his father looks at him like he’s lost the plot. Hell, maybe he has. “Not that this place is much better,” he adds as an afterthought. “And if you think I’m going back to school, you can think again.”

“How dare you answer back? Did your mother and me raise you to give your elders and betters cheek?!” his father demands.

“Oh, you did a fine job of raising me, that’s for sure,” snorts Craig, looking around at his bedroom, from the broken door desperately clinging to a single hinge, to the overflowing ashtray and empty vodka bottles lying strewn across the floor, “Yep, I’m definitely going to go far in life, just like my old man.”

A vein in Thomas Tucker’s neck throbs, and Craig is kind of worried that he’s actually going to explode. The elder takes a sharp inhale of breath and smiles at his son like a shark would smile at its prey. Grabbing his son by the front of his jacket, his voice is quiet and dangerous as he breathes, “You know what, Craig? I fucking hate your guts.”

“Don’t worry, dad, the feeling’s mutual,” Craig smiles, and, yep, he’s definitely fucking lost it. He’s mildly concerned that his dad might actually kill him, but he’s not entirely sure that he really cares anymore anyway.

His back hits his bedroom wall sharply as his father forces him against it, and he cringes, but the pain in his back is nothing compared to the dull ache left in his stomach once his father’s fist slams into it. Clearly years of bar fights have paid off, Craig thinks as he bites his lower lip with enough force to draw blood in an attempt not to cry out in pain. He tries to throw his father off of him, swinging punches wildly, and he manages to land one on his dad’s nose with a sickeningly satisfying crunch.

His mom has appeared at some point, Craig notes, and is also trying to prise his father off of him, and eventually Thomas allows her to pull him away, although not before he spits on Craig’s face.

“Charming,” the latter mumbles as his father pushes his mom aside and stalks out of the bedroom, grumbling profanities and insults under his breath. Craig hears him leave through the back door without even stopping to clean off the blood that was dripping from his nose (probably headed straight for the pub).

“You really shouldn’t aggravate him, Craig,” his mom tells him in a tired voice, “You know how angry he gets.”

Wiping his father’s spit off of his cheek with his sleeve, Craig waits until his mom has gone back through to the living room before standing up to examine the damage.

Closing his battered bedroom door the best he can, the assaulted teenager takes off his jacket and pulls his t-shirt over his head, and stares at the boy in the mirror. Thankfully, other than a few fresh bruises beginning to shine on his stomach and his lip fattening where he dug his teeth into it, nothing’s new. There’s still old bruises scattered across his chest from a couple of days ago when his dad came home a bit too drunk; and there’s still an angry pink scar running up his left forearm from that one time he came a bit too close to giving up; and there are still cigarette burns littering his pale skin (his father’s favourite, twisted game), but he can’t really remember anything else, so he supposes it’s okay, and he puts his shirt back on, turning away from the mirror.

There’s a quiet knock at his door, and Craig tells the visitor to come in. Ruby ducks around the derelict door, clad only in pyjama bottoms and a vest top, armed with a pack of cigarettes and a half empty bottle of vodka. She takes a seat on Craig’s unmade single bed and tosses him the smokes, setting the alcohol down on top of the duvet.

“Why aren’t you at school?” Craig asks his sister and she shrugs.

“Why aren’t _you_ at school?”

“Fair point,” Craig lights a cigarette and sits down beside Ruby.

“Mom didn’t make me go,” Ruby answers his question, as if that settles it and Craig sighs, not wanting his younger sibling to end up like him. “What was dad pissed off about today, then?”

“School,” Craig answers, “What else?”

Ruby laughs, lighting her own cigarette, “I should have known. He went absolutely ballistic when they phoned.”

 “You shouldn’t be smoking,” Craig frowns, and, reminding him that he too started smoking when he was fourteen, Ruby calls him a hypocrite. Her brother relents and there’s silence for a few minutes.

“I was kind of hoping dad would have left by the time I got home,” Craig muses after a while, stubbing out his cigarette, and Ruby nods.

“Every time I leave the house I’m kind of hoping that he’ll be gone when I get back,” she says, picking up an empty coke can from the floor to use as an ashtray, “Gone for good.”

“He’s not even that bad to you,” Craig grumbles, “It’s me that he hates, for some reason. But yeah, I know what you mean.”

The two sit and discuss their father for a while, opening the half-finished bottle of liquor and taking turns to down a mouthful. Craig’s already pretty drunk but knocks the alcohol back anyway, trying to distract himself from the dull pain in his stomach, and eventually he feels a little better and their conversation moves to lighter subjects.

There’s a knock at the door.

“Shit,” Craig yelps, kicking the empty vodka bottle under his bed and trying his best to look sober.

“Craig, could you get that?” their mom calls through from the living room as there’s another, more impatient knock at the door.

Craig rolls his eyes, but stands and ducks out of his bedroom to open the front door. When he’s met with two policemen he’s kind of confused.

“Um, hi?” he offers and the police officers nod at him.

“Good afternoon, son. We’ve had some reports of domestic violence at this address. May we come in?” one of them asks him.

Craig doesn’t answer, not quite sure what he’s supposed to do.

“Are either of your parents here?” the second officer presses, and Craig calls his mom through from the living room.

“What is it?” she asks him, sounding annoyed, before she spots the police officers standing on the doorstep. “What’s going on? Has something happened to Thomas? If he’s got himself into another bleeding fight…”

“Ma’am, we’ve had some reports of domestic violence at this address from your neighbours. If we could come in, we’d like to have a chat with you.”

“Good god,” Mrs Tucker grumbles under her breath, “When will Thomas fuckin’ learn?”

She steps aside to let the policemen in and directs them down the hall to the living room, turning round to glance at Craig and mouthing, “I’ll sort this.”

Craig nods, and goes back through to his bedroom.

“Am I right in believing there are policemen in our living room as we speak?” Ruby asks him.

“Yeah, the neighbours called them. Probably that interfering hag upstairs, knowing her,” Craig grumbles, referring to their elderly neighbour, Mrs Goldman. “Mom said she’d sort it, but this is, what, the third time they’ve been round this year? I mean, how long before something serious happens?”

“Don’t worry, Craig,” Ruby comforts her brother, despite the worry evident on her face, “Everything will be fine.”

Craig offers her a forced smile, and lights a cigarette.

“You smoke too much,” Ruby says, shaking her head.

“I know.”

xxxxx

The look on his mom’s pale face was all he needed to know that things were, in fact, not going to be fine this time.

“Oh god, Craig,” she whispers, her voice shaky, “I’m going to fucking murder Thomas. He’s really done it this time.”

Chewing his lower lip and trying to work out what to say, he comes up blank and shoves his hands into his pockets silently.

The two police officers were still trailing around the house talking in hushed voices. They’d spent a particularly long time in Craig’s room, noting the empty vodka bottles and cigarette packets littering the teenager’s bedroom floor, and the distressed door, and the hole in the wall where Mr Tucker slammed his fist through it one night.  Since he was eighteen they couldn’t do much, other than fine him for underage drinking.

Ruby, on the other hand, was a completely different story. The fourteen year olds face whitened when one of the police officers sympathetically told her that she was going to be taken into care. Craig and Laura Tucker quietly hovered in the background while she packed some of her clothes and belongings into a suitcase, before one of the policemen took it to load into the backseat of the police car.

Saying her goodbyes to her mom and older brother, Ruby is almost worried that Craig was going to crush her with the hug he envelopes her in.

“We’ll arrange for Ruby and yourselves to see each other in a safe setting,” one of the officers informs Craig and Laura, as Craig releases his younger sister, “But for now she’ll be taken to a foster home, and you’ll have to go to court before she will be allowed to move back home.”

“We also found drug paraphernalia, and you and your husband will need to attend a court hearing for that too,” the other officer turns to speak to Laura, and Craig, saying ‘bye’ to his younger sister a final time, quietly retreats to his bedroom.

Sitting cross legged on his bed, Craig waits until he hears the front door slam and the sound of the police car driving away outside. He doesn’t answer when his mom pokes her head round his bedroom door to say, “She’s gone.”, and instead just sighs softly and waits for her to leave.

Picking up the cigarette packet Ruby left lying on his bed earlier, he discovers that it’s empty and stands, sneaking out of his room and across the hallway into his parents’ bedroom to try and find a smoke or two to pinch. He ignores the broken vodka bottle lying in pieces on the floor, carefully stepping over the shards of glass, and tries under his dad’s pillow. Pocketing the poorly hidden bag of coke he finds, not caring that his father will probably murder him later, he frowns; no cigarettes. He tries the bedside cabinet and the dressing table drawers and, for fucks sake, how hard is it to find a cigarette around here? Stalking back out of his parents’ room, he goes through to the living room where his mom is sitting watching TV and neither of them say anything. Craig finally finds a half-finished packet of cigarettes behind a cushion on one of the sofas. He lights one up, taking a seat and staring at his mom.

“You know I love you, Craig,” she says after a minute, passing him an ashtray before the ash from his cigarette falls onto the already stained carpet, “With everything in my heart.”

Craig doesn’t answer, but he suddenly feels guilty about all the shit he (and his father) puts her through. She didn’t ask for any of this, after all. Feeling bad about smoking in front of her, he stands up and leaves, placing the ashtray down on the coffee table, hoping she’ll understand. Walking back down the hallway to his bedroom, Craig smokes the rest of his cigarette, before using an old credit card to make a messy line of coke on a CD case that was lying under his bed. He uses more than usual, used to the high after stealing the drug from his dad so often. His nose tingles as he snorts it, and as it fills his system he forces a half smile, hating himself with everything in his being.

At around two thirty he starts getting kind of hungry, and it’s only when he’s grabbing a couple of packets of chips from the kitchen cupboard that he notices the little bottles and packets sitting on the top shelf. He glances through to the living room where his mom is still sitting watching TV, and returns the small, tired smile she offers him. Reaching up to the top shelf, Craig picks up the first of the pill bottles and reads the label; ‘20mg OxyContin tablets. 2 a day. If more than two tablets taken within a 24 hour period contact doctor immediately.’

Craig sets the pill bottle down on the kitchen unit and reaches up for the packets of Paracetamol and Aspirin tablets, and the last two bottles of pills. Stashing them in his hoodie pocket and grabs the packets of chips and a bottle of coke before returning to his bedroom, smiling at his mom as he walks past.

Dumping the collection of pills on his bed, he doesn’t waste any time. Depressed and crashing from both alcohol and cocaine, he opens the bottle of juice and the first packet of Aspirin and swallows three of the small pills at once, then another two, and then some more until the packet is empty. Unscrewing the cap of one of the bottles of tablets, he tips a handful into his palm and swallows as many of them as he can manage, washing them down with coke, before taking some more.

After the first two packets are completely empty he stops, realizing what he’s just done. Part of him knows that if he really wants to kill himself he should probably just shoot or hang himself, or jump off that cliff where all those cows did years ago, and part of him doesn’t even want to die. And another part of him tells him that he may as well finish taking the stash of pills now that he’s started.

So he does, swallowing pill after pill until there are none left, and aside from a slight headache he doesn’t feel too different, and certainly doesn’t feel like he’s dying. Sighing, he lies down on his bed and stares up at his bedroom ceiling, waiting for the pills to kick in.

xxxxx

When Craig wakes up to the obnoxious taunting of a heart monitor and bright hospital lights he can’t remember much other than a violent seizure he had at some point, and throwing up a ton. He’s not at all surprised to be alive (when did you ever hear of someone successfully killing themselves by overdose, really?), although he’s disappointed nonetheless.

A passing nurse notices that he’s awake.

“Good morning, Craig,” she says briskly, “I’ll let a doctor know that you’re awake. You’re scheduled to be seen by a psychiatrist later, to assess whether or not you should be kept for further treatment or not. Don’t worry, this is strictly procedure…”

Craig lets her ramble on, his mind still hazy from all the drugs he took earlier, or yesterday, or whenever the fuck it was. It scares him a bit, knowing how badly he wishes he’d died, and that he came so close, and that he’s going to have to face his family eventually. And he realizes that he fucking hates himself for this; god only knows what this goddamned psychiatrist is going to think of him.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me ages to get this chapter done and I've been redrafting the start of this story since 2013 so I really have no excuse but oh well.

An overly perky nurse introduces herself as Lindsay, and says something about ‘the Grand Tour’. Craig doesn’t reply, and simply follows her through the ward as she directs him on where to go and when. They make their way up the ward quickly, first to the cafeteria, then the nurse’s station, the therapy rooms, the showers and toilets, and the day room.

“This is the day room,” Lindsay tells him, waving into a large room furnished with a couple of ratty sofas, some beanbags that look ready to burst, and a large TV. Naturally, as it was still early, it’s relatively quiet, but one blond boy is sitting playing Skyrim on the PlayStation. The boy jumps out of his skin when the door squeaks open, but offers a smile when he sees Lindsay.

“Morning, Tweek,” Lindsay greets the boy, “Shouldn’t you still be in bed?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Tweek apologizes, “J-Jamia let me in here.”

“Okay,” Lindsay nods, “But I’m going to need to talk to your doctors about putting you back on sleeping pills.”

The boy shrugs and returns to his game, yelping when he discovers that he’s being beaten to death by a bear, and Lindsay finally shows Craig to the dormitories, still chatting loudly about the hospital’s time schedule.

“Normally we’d have individual counselling sessions in the morning, and group therapy in the afternoon, but so that you can meet everyone we’ve decided to have group therapy first today,” Lindsay tells him.

“Wonderful,” Craig replies grimly, his skin prickling at the mere thought.

While Lindsay continues to babble away, a loud alarm (not unlike the bell at Craig’s school) sounds, and Craig just about jumps out of his skin.

“Ah yes,” Lindsay chuckles, “The buzzer takes a bit of getting used to. It’s usually not so loud, but it serves as an alarm in the mornings and you know what teenagers are like getting up. Anyway,” she stops walking outside one of the doors leading off of the dormitory corridor. “This is the room you’ll be staying in. Everyone has a roommate, and this was the last room with a free bed. You’ll be rooming with Butters, and I need to warn you now that he may come off a bit… cold, at first. Don’t take it personally though; he’s a lovely boy, but he’s not too pleased about getting a roommate.”

Great, Craig thinks dully, people are going to hate him as much in here as they do everywhere else.

Lindsay swipes her access card over the lock, before knocking on the door and entering without waiting for a response. Craig thinks this is pretty invasive and very rude, but doesn’t say anything as he shuffles into the room behind her, staring at his feet.

“Good morning, Butters,” Lindsay says in the same annoyingly cheerful voice she’s been using since Craig first met her. She doesn’t get a reply. “… Look, I know you’re annoyed, but-”

“Y-yes, I’m annoyed! You know I want to be on my own!” The voice is quiet, but sounds pretty pissed off. Craig looks up, wanting to add a face to the voice, and is surprised when the boy sitting on the bed looks less angry and more… afraid. He’s wearing a costume that looks like it was made out of tinfoil over his clothes. It looked like it was ready to fall apart too, but that was none of Craig’s business. The boy was huddled in the corner, arms crossed, glaring at Lindsay from behind his silver mask.

“I’m sorry, Butters, but this was the only room with a free bed.”  
  
“I’m not Butters, I’m Professor Chaos,” the boy corrects her matter-of-factly, and Lindsay simply smiles at him. “Can’t you m-move the bed into another r-room? I’m sure there’s s-space somewhere!” the boy on the bed pleads desperately, but Lindsay simply shakes her head.

“I’m sure you and Craig will get on very well,” she reasons.

The boy sitting on the bed finally looks at Craig, and offers a greeting in the form of a tiny nod which Craig returns.

“… Right,” Lindsay says, “I need to go and talk to everyone in the cafeteria. I’ll leave you to unpack, Craig. Butters; you can go and get breakfast when the buzzer sounds as usual, but would you mind making sure Craig finds his way to group therapy at ten?”

Professor Chaos doesn’t answer her, but this doesn’t seem to bother Lindsay who promptly leaves.

“Thank god she’s gone,” Craig grumbles, not at all missing her chirpy voice, and he’s almost sure that he hears Professor Chaos snort quietly, although maybe he’s just hearing things.

“So, um, are you shy, or selectively mute, or what?” Craig asks curiously, then immediately wishes that he was better at filtering his speech because now his roommate probably thinks he’s a rude, nosy bastard.

The other boy doesn’t answer (although Craig hadn’t really expected him to), and leaves quickly when the loud buzzer sounds again, scaring Craig senseless for the second time in ten minutes.

xxxxx

Clyde scowls when Lindsay throws open the cafeteria doors and all but dances into the room.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” he nudges Stan as they stand in line in the cafeteria queue, nodding towards the aforementioned nurse. “Usually she doesn’t grace us with her presence until midday.”

“I don’t know,” Stan shrugs, grabbing a couple of slices of toast and dumping them onto his plate. “You want a bit of toast?”

Clyde shakes his head, no, and picks up the smallest apple from the fruit bowl, despite having no intention of eating it. “Did you really have to ask?”

Stan shrugs for a second time, and the two walk over to the table where Stan’s roommate, Kyle, is sitting stirring cereal around a bowl listlessly.

“Alright, dude?” Stan asks, taking a bite out of his first slice of toast and sitting down beside him while Clyde takes a seat opposite the two.

“Hmm? Kyle looks up, “Oh, uh, yeah.”

“Any idea why Lindsay’s here so early?” Clyde asks curiously, and Kyle shakes his head, sighing when Stan starts asking him why he’s not eating.

Clyde continues to stare at Lindsay curiously, and finally, once everyone in the cafeteria is seated around one of the tables, she clears her throat loudly.

“Good morning guys,” she calls in her usual annoyingly chirpy voice, “I hope everyone’s in a good mood today?”

Clyde snorts loudly and Lindsay narrows her eyes at him. “Quite,” she says, before continuing. “Anyway, today’s going to be a little bit different than usual as we have a new patient joining us. He’s currently in his room unpacking, but you’ll all get to meet him later today. So that he can get to know everyone, we’re going to have group therapy at ten, and have individual therapy in the afternoon.”

Someone lets out an audible groan, which Lindsay chooses to ignore. “Anyway, I’ll let you all get your breakfast, and I’ll see you in group therapy at ten!”

“Well, now we know why she’s here so early,” Stan says to Clyde.

“Fuck, I hate group therapy,” is all the latter replies.

xxxxx

Too soon, Craig finds himself sitting in a dull room that is apparently where group therapy is held. He privately thinks it seems more funeral home-esque but doesn’t comment, and instead waits for the ever chirpy Lindsay to start the session.

“Okay guys,” she begins, “As I told you earlier, we have a new patient joining us today. This is Craig.”

Craig glares at the circle of patients as the whole room turns to look at him. Someone on the other side of the circle snickers at him.

“Now, I thought we could go around the circle and introduce ourselves,” Lindsay suggests, “How about we start with you, Tweek?” She smiles at the blond boy who Craig remembers from the Grand Tour that morning.

“ _Ahh_!” yelps the blond, “Uh, okay, um, I’m Tweek and I like v-video games?”

“I’m Kyle, and, um,” the boy sitting to Tweek’s right stops speaking for a moment and glances at the boy sitting on his other side, “Stan is my best friend?”

Stan smiles at Kyle before he introduces himself, “Hi I’m Stan, and Kyle is _my_ best friend.”

“I’m Clyde, and I hate you all,” the next boy announces harshly, and Craig stares at him. He’s painfully thin, and Craig guesses that he has an eating disorder of some kind. Clyde folds his arms and scowls at anyone and everyone who dares to look at him, raising an eyebrow when he catches Craig’s eye. _What a fucking asshole_ , the latter thinks as he looks away, turning his attention over to the patient sitting beside Clyde, and nearly laughing when Clyde’s polar opposite introduces himself; Craig reckons Eric is the fattest boy he’s ever laid eyes on. Binge eater, maybe?

Craig recognizes the boy sitting to Eric’s right; it’s his roommate Professor Chaos, who is still wearing his tinfoil costume and is giving Lindsay a wounded look. “Um,” he mumbles, “I… I’m Professor Chaos and-”

Lindsay smiles at him, prompting him to go on.

Professor Chaos seems to be struggling, and looks incredibly relieved when the boy sitting beside him bursts out with, “Are you kidding me?”

Everyone turns to face the boy. He’s glaring at Lindsay, eyes full of contempt as he continues, “Can’t you just skip him? You’re fucking torturing him!”

“Kenneth!” Lindsay scolds him, “What have I told you about using foul language?”

The boy, Kenneth, snorts and crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow at the woman, who turns back to Professor Chaos but eventually relents when she realizes she’s not going to get another word out of him.

“Alright, fine,” she says, “Let’s just move on. Kenneth?”

“Hi, I’m Kenny, I’m eighteen, and this place is a dump. Unlucky getting yourself landed here,” he introduces himself to Craig, ignoring the frown Lindsay sends his way.

Finally, Lindsay turns to face Craig and smiles, and he realizes that he’s going to have to introduce himself to this group of assholes. Cursing inwardly he grumbles, “Uh, hi, I’m Craig,” and he flips the room off before he can stop himself. Not that he really tries to.

Lindsay chooses not to comment and instead gets on with the mercifully short group therapy session. Craig spends most of it spacing out and thinking about how he’s managed to wind up in a mental ward, and listening to the patients’ bullshit answers to Lindsay’s bullshit questions.

“Clyde, how have you been feeling?”

Craig watches the skeletal brunet stare Lindsay down wordlessly. This doesn’t seem to faze her, and Craig figures that Clyde is a thoroughly unpleasant asshole to everyone, and maybe they’re not so different.

xxxxx

When the group therapy session ends, the patients are sent through to the day room which, to Craig, felt a lot different when it was full of people lazing around on the beanbags and sofas. Not long after the patients get there, things kick off when two of them start fighting over a PlayStation controller. One of them screams suddenly, letting go of his tight grip on the remote to grab his nose, which is beginning to bleed.

When a nurse starts questioning him, the other boy, who Craig recognizes to be the fat-ass Eric who he met in group therapy, protests, “It’s not my fault; it’s my turn to play!”

It doesn’t take long for two men wearing hospital uniforms to burst into the room and all but drag Eric, now kicking and screaming at the nurses, out of the room. “I fucking hate you all!” the boy shouts right before the door closes behind the guards.

Craig rolls his eyes from where he’s sitting in the corner. Hopefully every day in the mental ward is exciting as this.

It doesn’t take long for most people to get back to whatever they were doing before the commotion, apart from the twitchy blond boy who Craig had met that morning, Tweek, who he notices staring at him from across the room. Craig raises an eyebrow at the boy who smiles slightly before hopping off of his chair and walking over to where the black haired boy is sitting.

“Hey,” he says, taking a seat next to Craig, who offers a quick nod. “How’s your first day g-going?”

“Eh,” Craig replies.

Tweek chuckles, “First days are shit for e-everyone, but you’ll get used to the place – everyone h-here is really nice.”

“That fat-ass Eric just punched some kid in the face right in front of me.”

“Yeah, well, it kicks off quite a l-lot here on the mental ward,” Tweek shrugs, twitching slightly, “But if you keep your head down and stay out of Cartman- Eric’s way you should be fine.”

“Mm,” Craig agrees noncommittally.

“So, what’re you here for? _Nghh,_ if you don’t mind me asking, I mean!”

Craig shrugs, not exactly in the mood to talk about his recent attempted suicide with a complete stranger, eventually answering with, “I dunno… Depression, I guess. What about you?”

“M-me?!” Tweek yelps, “Nothing’s wrong with me! They just want an excuse to pump me full of drugs so they can get me! _Nghh!_ ”

The blond jumps up and skitters away from Craig headed straight for the door, where he proceeds to start panicking when it won’t open, and five minutes later a screaming Tweek is carried from the room by one of the guards who removed Cartman not ten minutes earlier. Craig rolls his eyes; that kid was fucking insane.

Then again, wasn’t he also locked up in the loony bin, and didn’t that also make him fucking insane by default?

Craig scowls and folds his arms, staring around the room and praying for something interesting to happen, but is left alone with his thoughts until the loud buzzer sounds at midday. Craig remembers Lindsay telling him that 12 noon was lunch time and stands, following the rest of the patients out of the room and through to the cafeteria.

Standing in the queue, Craig looks over towards the tables and wonders where he’s going to sit.

Stan, Kyle, and that Clyde kid were sitting together at one, with that fat-ass Eric (who hadn’t returned to the day room) sitting across from them. He seemed to be arguing with the other three, and Craig overheard Kyle snap, “Like you even need all that food, fat boy! Your flab could probably sustain you into old age!” The rest of the table collapses into laughter and Craig privately agrees with Kyle.

The next table was empty, and at the one in the corner was Tweek who was sitting alone and twitching away with a sandwich sitting abandoned on the table in front of him and a cup of something hot in his shaky hands.

Finding himself at the front of the lunch queue, Craig grabs a sandwich without bothering to check what’s in it and decides he’ll sit at the empty table by himself, but while he’s walking there something orange collides with him and nearly sends him flying.

“What the fuck,” he grumbles, steadying himself, before flipping off what he now recognizes as Kenny in his orange parka.

“Sorry dude,” Kenny laughs at the dark haired boy, “Didn’t see you there… Hey, you’re not gonna sit by yourself are you? Come and sit with us!”

Craig guesses ‘us’ to be Kenny, of course, and Professor Chaos who he now spots standing timidly behind him, and, weighing up his options, he eventually shrugs and follows the two blond boys to the far table where Tweek is sitting.

 “Hey,” Kenny greets him as the three boys sit down, and Tweek jumps so much that some of the contents of his cup splash out of it and all over the table in front of him.

“ _Gah!_ ” he yelps, looking up, “Oh… h-hey guys.”

Looking down at the now rather soggy sandwich sitting in front of Tweek, Kenny places his own lunch down beside it and says that he’s away to get something else, and Tweek takes a couple of bites out of the fresh sandwich before dropping it back onto the plate, and Craig has a sneaky suspicion that the twitchy blond only did so to be polite.

Taking a bite of his own sandwich (which proves to be egg; Craig decides that he’s definitely going to check the fillings tomorrow), he looks around the room at the other patients, unsure of what to say to either Tweek or Professor Chaos.

Eric is glaring at the three boys he was previously arguing with, arms crossed and lower lip stuck out, so Craig guesses that Stan, Clyde, or Kyle delivered the winning blow and chuckles to himself, before quickly looking away when the fat boy looks up and sees him staring. As he turns a piece of food smacks him on the back of the head and he flips Eric off without turning round.

“Fat prick,” comments Kenny as he flops down into the chair beside Craig, who agrees. “So,” he continues “What you in for?”

“You act as if this place is a prison, Ken,” Professor Chaos says quietly.

“Well it’s as good as! They won’t even let me go out for a smoke half the time! Anyway, Craig, what did you do to get dumped here?”

“Uh, depression, I think?” Craig replies, feeling like an idiot, “And they said I had a drug problem, but that’s a load of crap,” he adds as an afterthought, remembering the chat he and his mom had with the psychiatrist back at Hells Pass. “What about you?”

“That’s rough, man. I got sent here last month for killing myself seven times. Three of them were in the very week I came actually.”

“Uh, don’t you mean you _tried_ to kill yourself?” Craig asks bluntly and Kenny sighs.

“I don’t expect you to believe me –no one else does - but I _can’t_ die!”

Craig stares at the blonde, wondering if everyone in the ward is this insane, and then wondering if he’s been put in the wrong place because Kenny, Tweek, and Professor Chaos all seem to be in their own fucking worlds. At least Craig knows who and where he is, and that everyone fucking dies eventually (it was just a shame that he hadn’t yet).

Changing the subject, Craig quietly asks Kenny what’s up with Professor Chaos and Tweek, and the other boy says that it’s not really his place to say, before proceeding to tell him anyway.

“Butters- Professor Chaos, sorry, was abused by his parents real bad, like _real_ bad when he was a kid, and developed social phobia and body dysmorphic disorder because of it. Eventually it got so bad that he invented himself a new persona thinking it would help toughen him up, but his asshole dad who’s this raging homophobe thought he was dressing up like a little queer – all the silver, y’know – and he fucked his son up pretty badly.”

Kenny looks over at Professor Chaos who has his eyes shut and is quietly humming to himself, looking perfectly content behind his tin foil mask, sighs sadly, and turns back to face Craig.

“He ended up shipping Butters off to a Pray the Gay Away camp, but they eventually gave up with him and told his dad to have him sent here, and here he’s been stuck for a good five months now.”

“Poor guy,” Craig says sympathetically, knowing all too well what it’s like to have an asshole for a dad.

“And Tweek,” Kenny continues quietly, “He got here a week after I did, after he tried to kill himself. He has really bad anxiety which is why he’s so shaky.”

“And they let him drink coffee?”

“His parents run a coffee shop,” Kenny chuckles, “And he used to drink, fuck, I don’t know, several gallons a day or something? Anyway, the nurses tried to make him stop drinking it cold turkey and he threatened to smash his head against the wall until it killed him so now they’re trying to slowly wean him off it.

“He also has ADHD, OCD, and insomnia, so yeah, he’s pretty crazy. I feel bad for Clyde; he’s the one who has to put up with him twitching away to himself all night in their dorm room.”

The two look across the table at the nervous blond who offers them a crooked smile, appearing not to have realized that they were just discussing him. “H-hey, you guys wanna play the PlayStation with me after lunch?” he asks chirpily and the rest of the table agrees.

xxxxx

“You’re such a fat-ass Cartman,” Stan grumbles through a mouthful of food.

“Hey, don’t call me fat!” protests the large boy sitting across the table, “I’m hotter than you, and I don’t, uh, take it in the ass!”

“Fuck off.”

Cartman smirks at the black haired boy before tucking into his (large) lunch. Stuffing what very well could have been an entire sandwich into his mouth, he says something about how the hospital’s lunches were definitely getting smaller every day.

“Like you even need all that food, fat boy! Your flab could probably sustain you into old age!” Kyle snaps at Cartman, sending Stan and Clyde into a fit of laughter, and Cartman responds with a Jew comment that sets the two of them bickering between themselves.

Shaking his head at the pair, Stan turns to talk to Clyde whose lunch is sitting on the table untouched.

“Dude, you should eat something,” he says and the brown haired boy simply snorts in response, knowing full well that some nurses will be over soon to harass him into choking down the calories.

And sure enough, half way into the lunch hour two nurses sit down beside him and try and coax him into eating a cheese sandwich. After he refuses to touch his food for a good twenty minutes he eventually swallows a tiny mouthful before he realizes what he’s done. It’s almost as if he can feel his waistline expanding and for a minute he thinks he might actually start crying in the middle of the cafeteria.

“Well done, Clyde,” one of the nurses says gently, “Do you think you can manage another bite?”

No he fucking well _can’t_ manage another bite. His brain is already racing as he thinks about how he’s going to lose that bloody cheese sandwich, and eventually the nurses relent and he’s able to return to the day room where the other patients went twenty odd minutes ago (he was the only freak who had to be held back).

Not ten minutes after he’s sat down next to Stan, one of the nurses, Jamia, bursts into the room looking worried.

“Guys!” she shouts over the patients’ chatter, “Listen up a minute! One of the forks has gone missing from the cafeteria so we’re going to have to do a room search.”

“Just your average day in the mental ward,” Clyde snorts.

“I wonder who took it,” muses Kenny, and Stan frowns, thinking about his best friend.

“Do you think it was Kyle?” he wonders aloud, “I haven’t seen him since lunch, and he _did_ seem pretty down this morning…”

No one answers and, concerned, he stands and asks one of the nurses to unlock his dorm room door. She looks at him suspiciously for a moment, but eventually agrees so long as she can go into the room with him given the current situation. She swipes the access card over the lock on his door and Stan bursts into the room, expecting to find Kyle sitting scratching away at his already scarred arms. He’s more than a little surprised when he finds the room empty, and, turning to face the nurse he asks, “Have you seen Kyle anywhere?”

She thinks for a moment and then frowns. “Now that you mention it, I can’t say I have. You don’t think he’s the one who-?”

“I don’t know,” Stan replies, “But you know what he’s like. He could be in the toilets?”

The nurse nods and the two leave Stan and Kyle’s room, heading down the ward in the direction of the toilets. When they get there Stan calls Kyle’s name.

There’s no response, but the quiet sound of muffled sobbing from the end cubicle doesn’t escape Stan’s hearing and he walks over to the locked door quickly.

“Kyle, is that you?”  he asks, tapping on the door gently.

 “…Yeah,” Kyle replies from inside the stall, his voice thick and choked up.

“Are you okay?” Stan already knows the answer, but asks anyway.

“I’m fine,” Kyle’s voice cracks as he speaks, before he breaks out into fresh sobs without making any attempt at covering them.

“Could you open the door for me?” the nurse asks gently, and Kyle does as she says, the bolt sliding away loudly.

Stan sighs when he finds himself faced with his friend sitting curled up on the floor next to the toilet bowl, a few small trails of vomit running down his chin. There’s a fork lying on the floor beside him.

The nurse bends down and grabs the utensil quickly, pocketing it, then Kyle allows Stan to pick him up off of the floor and the two follow the nurse out of the toilets. She leads them down the ward to one of the empty therapy rooms where she hands Kyle some tissues and tells him to clean himself up.

The two boys collapse into some chairs as the nurse leaves to tell Jamia that the missing fork mystery has been solved.

“You alright dude?”

Kyle doesn’t answer and Stan sighs.

“I mean, you’re obviously not, but-” he stops talking when Kyle sniffles loudly, and makes do with wrapping his arms around the other boy, who clings to him tightly,

The nurse, meanwhile, returns to the day room and Clyde watches her whisper something in Jamia’s ear. Jamia’s tense shoulders relax slightly, and she thanks the nurse.

“Don’t worry guys, we don’t need to do room searches after all,” she announces, looking relieved, “We’ve found the missing fork.”

“That was a short-lived drama,” mumbles Clyde, “We could use some more excitement around here.”

Several of the other patients murmur their agreement, but much to their disappointment the rest of the day goes by relatively smoothly. Clyde ignores his therapist for the most part when he’s called out for his individual counselling session, and eats as little as he can get away with at dinner, and then he sits at a table in the day room with Stan and Kyle after dinner, not paying very much attention to their conversation.

Leaning back in his chair, he idly looks around the room at the other patients.

Cartman was sitting at a table nearby playing (cheating at) a game of cards with that gay little dweeb Butters, and Kenny was sitting at the table beside theirs, probably waiting to step in if Cartman had one of his kick offs and things got violent (he’d always been kind of protective of Butters, and Clyde briefly wonders if the two are fucking or something).

Tweek and Craig, the new patient, were both sitting slumped in some ancient beanbags in the corner of the room, Tweek with a cup of coffee in his shaky hands. They seemed to be having a conversation, although Craig was answering kind of reluctantly, and Clyde makes a mental note to tell the new boy that he can tell people to fuck off if he doesn’t want to talk, and what the fuck Clyde? Why would you want to talk to anyone, let alone the asshole new boy? You’re meant to hate everyone here (except maybe Stan and Kyle sometimes).

And speaking of the asshole new boy, Clyde realizes that he’s staring, and the asshole new boy has fucking caught him staring and is now flipping him off. Clyde raises an eyebrow and looks away, drumming his fingers on the table. _Whatever dude, have fun being stuck with Tweek._

xxxxx

Craig has just returned to his room after brushing his teeth when Jamia barges in and asks if he’s okay and if his first day has been okay, and tells him what to do if he needs to use the bathroom through the night, and Craig offers some one word answers and doesn’t really take much in because he’s fucking exhausted and just wants her to leave so he can go to bed.

As she’s turning to exit, Jamia asks Professor Chaos if he’s okay, and he makes a point of reminding her that he didn’t want a roommate, and Jamia simply smiles at him and leaves. Craig silently thanks god that she’s gone because he’s already getting sick of the chirpy nurses and he’s only been here a day.

A silence falls over the room and Craig dives under his duvet, eager to get some sleep. It’s only when he’s just about sleeping that someone starts shouting out of nowhere and Craig jumps so much that he thinks his soul has maybe actually left his body.

“Jamia, you don’t f-fucking understand!” a panicked voice is yelling from somewhere outside in the corridor.

Craig shoots Professor Chaos- Butters (he’s not wearing his tinfoil costume anymore) a questioning look and the other boy manages a quiet, “T-Tweek.” He doesn’t look at all surprised by the outburst.

“I need to check all the doors before someone gets fucking killed, man!”

“Tweek, all the doors are locked,” Jamia tries to reassure the boy, but Tweek evidently doesn’t agree with her, still insisting that ‘everyone will be sorry when they wind up dead’.

The shouting continues for several more minutes before Jamia gives up and the ward quietens down once more. Tweek checks that each door is locked twice around, which makes Craig feel safe, if anything.

“S-so, how was your first day?” the boy on the other bed asks in a quiet voice, and Craig is surprised that he’s even speaking to him and doesn’t answer straight away.

“It was… okay,” he says eventually, and Butters nods understandingly.

“Y-you get used t-to the place.” He offers Craig a supportive smile, which the latter does his best to return. “A-anyway, I’m tired. G’night.”

“Night,” Craig replies, turning over and pulling his duvet up a little more, closing his eyes and praying that sleep will take him before anyone else starts screaming, and eventually it does.


End file.
